concrete-vec

Concrete text and mathematics as vector outlines, with a synthetic bold weight, for pdflatex.

What it does

Knuth's Concrete fonts are lovely, but the existing packages leave two gaps:

• Bitmap mathematics. The Concrete text fonts have free Type 1 outlines only in T1/TS1 (the ecc metrics, via cm-super); the Concrete math fonts ship as METAFONT source only. So concmath / ccfonts embed bitmap (Type 3) math fonts even when the text is vector.
• No bold. There is no bold Concrete font, and t1ccr.fd silently substitutes Computer Modern bold, so \textbf quietly changes typeface (and on current LaTeX may give no weight at all).

concrete-vec addresses both:

• sets T1 and makes Concrete the roman family, so text is vector;
• uses mathastext to reuse the Concrete text font in math mode, so math letters, digits and operators are vector Concrete too;
• synthesises a bold weight by stroking outlines (PDF text rendering mode 2), patching \bfseries so bold works in headings, tables and list labels, and providing \bd{...} — one command that bolds in both modes: ordinary bold in text, and in mathematics an in-place stroke that bolds any single symbol (Latin or Greek) while keeping its shape, so \bd{x} is the italic x made heavy and \bd{\pi} a bold π. Genuine bold designs (sans, typewriter) are left untouched.

Everything in the output is a vector outline.

Usage

\usepackage{amsmath}       % if wanted, load first
\usepackage{concrete-vec}  % load last

Load it after amsmath and any other math package (mathastext must be the last math package read). See concrete-vec.pdf for options and examples.

Requirements

ccfonts, the ecc metrics, cm-super, mathastext, pdfrender, and — for the default greek=lgr — the CB Greek fonts (cbfonts, cbfonts-fd). All are in a full TeX Live / MiKTeX. A PDF-producing engine (pdflatex or lualatex) is required for the synthetic bold.

Files

License

Copyright © 2026 Matthew Lorig. Released under the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) v1.3c or later. Maintenance status: maintained.

Author

Matthew Lorig — mlorig@uw.edu